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Thursday Night Smackdown: Reading is for Losers

I can be a wordy motherfucker. I’m a fan of, you know, lots of words and shit.

Not tonight. Because I am tired as all hell. Perhaps more words will come later, but they will not be coming tonight.

Plus, disincentive: even though these Scandinavian spiced meatballs with caramelized apples from the excellent The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper came out just as they were supposed to and Brian sucked them down like a Hoover on crack, I just wasn’t a fan.

(Above: the ingredients for cheater’s broth. Chuck this shit into some boxed stock, simmer for half an hour and poof! Less sucky stock.)

It also required me to put meat – ground beef and chicken – in a food processor. And as anyone who’s been reading for any length of time knows, I am EXTREMELY WARY of putting animal protein into the food processor. As it turns out, I’m also not a fan of nutmeg and ginger in my meat. Who knew?

Prior to this, in a photo I could not bring myself to inflict upon you, I had to make a slurry of wine, onion, the spices and egg yolk in the FoPro, into which the meat then went. Really, even the word “slurry” is kind of gross. Say it to yourself a few times. Slurry. Slurry. Slurry. Don’t you feel a little queasy? And you didn’t have to SEE it.

And then there were prunes, and the less said about them the better. Suffice it to say, I feel the same way about prunes in my meat as I do about nutmeg and ginger.

The meatballs were cute and cooked up all brown and pretty like, but they gave me the heebie jeebies. I knew too much about them, and having to form meatballs, dealing with the cold slippery mush… never fails to squick.

Along with nutmeg, ginger and prunes, let’s add caraway seeds to the list of things I don’t like with my meat. In my rye bread, sure, bring it on. But keep it away from my meat.

I’ll take this part: caramelized apples and onions in wine reduction fortified with the cheater’s stock. The only problem: it was destined to go over those damn meatballs.

And there it is, and although the apples tasted good, I can’t help but think the whole thing looks a little like Alpo with a spring of dill, if you served your dog his or her food over white rice in expensive dishware.

I still recommend the book; much other good has come from it. And like I said, Brian had a moment, and I almost had to bodily restrain him from eating the entire pound-and-a-half’s worth of meat. But these meatballs? Not for me.

Aw, that combination of flavours actually really appeals to me…but I can definitely understand that it would bring on queasiness in others, especially when there’s slurry to be considered. Also – nice one, tired blogging is hard but this was a good read as per usual 🙂

Is it odd that I’ve just spent 5 minutes at urban dictionary learning the many meanings of squick? Whatevs.
Slurry? No problem. Meat in fopro? No problem. But prunes in meatballs? Bad flashbacks to meatloaves I made for my German instructor in culinary school – I’m squicked.

These meatballs actually look pretty delightful to me…minus the slurred meat, when I think of prunes, ginger and caraway I start to drool just a bit.

Hey, so here’s an awful meat story. I was going to visit my brother a few years ago and decided to make his giant Hell hound some dog biscuits (purpose, of course, was that while I slept he would root through my bag for the biscuits and be less inclined to eat my face). Into the blender went milk, eggs, brewers yeast, and raw liver. It was like an offal smoothie and I can still detect the acrid stench of tinny meat in my nostrils every now and then. That was the stuff of which nightmares are made.

thank you for sharing your horrific liver blender story. now it will haunt me as well.

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Once upon a time, I wrote this food blog. It was a pretty great blog, if I do say so myself. I don't write it any more, but all the recipes and hijinx remain available for your cooking and reading pleasure.